When Charlotte Brody found out the US healthcare system was responsible for more carcinogenic dioxin discharge than any other industry, she decided to do something about it.

Rather than turning to activism, however, Brody – a former nurse – has reached out to hospital administrators helping them commit to reducing medical waste incineration, increase recycling, and construct new hospitals without cancer causing construction materials.

Join host Jerry Kay, publisher of the Environmental News Network, as we learn about Charlotte Brody’s Healthcare Without Harm campaign, find out how ethnic restaurants are going "green" and meet the man who helped plant over a million trees in Los Angeles.

Primlani is the Founder and Executive Director of Thimmakka's Resources for Environmental Education, a California based environmental non-profit. As one of the most prominent Indian environmentalists in the United States, she has designed and implemented a program of comprehensive environmental outreach to restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area called Thimmakka Certified Green Restaurants (TCGR). She is the recipient of the national Environmental Leadership Fellowship 2003, United States Environmental Protection Agency's Environmental Heroes award in 2003, the state of California's highest and most prestigious honor - the California Governor's Award 2003, the Ashoka Innovators for the Public Social Entrepreneurs Fellowship 2004-07, and has been named among the top 40 business leaders by the East Bay Business Times, 2005.

Charlotte Brody  Co - Founder, Healthcare Without Harm

Brody is the founder of the Health Care Without Harm Campaign – an international coalition of 423 organizations in 51 countries working to make health care more environmentally responsible and sustainable. She is currently the Executive Director of Commonweal, a non-profit health and environmental research institute. A registered nurse and mother of two, Brody lives in Northern California.

Andy Lipkis  President, TreePeople

Lipkis began planting trees to rehabilitate smog and fire-damaged forests when he was 15 years old. He founded TreePeople and has served as president since 1973. Lipkis’ programs include airlifting bare root fruit trees to Africa, inspiring the planting of one million trees in Los Angeles before the 1984 Summer Olympics, numerous disaster relief efforts during flood and fire, and many trainings designed to increase citizen involvement in urban tree planting and care. He and his wife Kate were named to the UN Environment Programme's Global 500 Roll of Honour and they hold American Forests' Lifetime Achievement Award. In 1998, Lipkis was honored as Founder of the Year at National Philanthropy Day. Andy and Kate authored The Simple Act of Planting a Tree (Jeremy P. Tarcher, 1990).

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